Exiled
by AKs-on-show
Summary: The Jedi Knights are all but extinct. Only Meetra Surik, former general in Revan's army and exiled Jedi, remains and she is being hunted. From Dantooine to Korriban, from Onderon to Nar Shaddaa, she and her allies search for the scattered Jedi Council... but betrayal lurks around every corner. Night has fallen on the galaxy. The Sith are coming.
1. Chapter 1

_A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..._

* * *

**DRAMATIS PERSONAE**

Crew of the _Ebon Hawk_

**Atton Rand**; spacer (human male)  
**Bao-Dur**; technician (Iridonian Zabrak male)  
**Brianna**; handmaiden (human/Echani female)  
**Canderous Ordo**; Mandalore (human male)  
**G0-T0**; planning droid  
**HK-47**; assassin droid  
**Kreia**; Force adept (human female)  
**Meetra Surik**; exiled Jedi (human female)  
**Mical**; archaeologist (human male)  
**Mira**; bounty hunter (human female)  
**T3-M4**; utility droid  
**Visas Marr**; Sith acolyte (Miraluka female)

The Jedi Council

**Master Atris**, hidden on Telos  
**Master Kavar**, hidden on Onderon  
**Master Lonna Vash**, hidden on Korriban  
**Master Vrook Lamar**, hidden on Dantooine  
**Master Zez-Kai Ell**, hidden on Nar Shaddaa

* * *

IT IS A PERILOUS TIME FOR THE GALAXY. A BRUTAL CIVIL WAR HAS ALL BUT DESTROYED THE JEDI ORDER, LEAVING THE AILING REPUBLIC ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE.

AMID THE TURMOIL, THE EVIL SITH HAVE SPREAD ACROSS THE GALAXY, HUNTING DOWN AND DESTROYING THE REMAINING JEDI KNIGHTS.

NARROWLY ESCAPING A DEADLY SITH AMBUSH, THE LAST KNOWN JEDI CLINGS TO LIFE ABOARD A BATTERED FREIGHTER NEAR THE RAVAGED WORLD OF PERAGUS...

* * *

**A/N:** This is a bit of an experiment in novelising _Star Wars: The Old Republic II - The Sith Lords_. This story will stick as close to canon as possible but it isn't a direct adaptation of the game. All the characters, settings and situations will be there, though won't necessary hew closely to the gameplay. For instance: the Handmaiden is coming along on this trip, even if she didn't if the player character was female in the game. Parts will be expanded, others will be dropped. Anyway! Please read, please review and please enjoy. A brave little droid is aboard a damaged freighter somewhere in the depths of interstellar space...


	2. Prologue - T3-M4

**PROLOGUE  
****T3-M4**

* * *

_THE _EBON HAWK  
_INTERSTELLAR SPACE NEAR THE PERAGUS SYSTEM_  
_XAPPYH SECTOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES_

* * *

It took several long moments for T3-M4's memory core to cycle up to ready mode. It took several more moments for his sensors to come online and even longer for his photoreceptors to blink into life. Floods of data crashed into his systems, momentarily overloading them. His processors worked overtime, eventually sorting through the information.

A quick self-diagnostic confirmed what he had already suspected. He was partially disabled, his primary motivator damaged and sparking. His memory core had been partially corrupted. As he processed the grim data, he focused outwards. He was aboard a starship, he quickly surmised, in an access tunnel or corridor. He recognised the scuffed, dark bulkhead across from him.

The _Ebon Hawk_. He was aboard the _Ebon Hawk_.

Droids weren't supposed to feel emotions. He understood that. They were supposed to receive regular memory wipes so that their artificial brains didn't develop independent intelligence or personality. Evidently, he'd been allowed to go for too long without a memory wipe because, when he realised he was aboard the Hawk, a sense of relief settled over his circuits.

But there was something wrong. His sensors could detect traces of coolant in the air, erratic energy spikes coming from the ship's EM feeds and power lines. He hooted, his vocorder a little scratchy. He tried moving and scooted forward a few centimetres. His left tractor pod struck something.

Tilting his flat, circular cognition module down, he spied the form of a sentient, humanoid lifeform. He extended a scanner probe towards her but its readout confirmed what he already knew: she was dead. She wore a dark, homespun robe and her craggy, pale face was unfamiliar. Perhaps his memory core had been more compromised than he'd realised, as he felt that perhaps he should recognise her.

Hooting once more, he slid back.

At once, he became more aware of his surroundings. He had moved from the _Ebon Hawk_'s ring corridor into the main hold. The place was a mess. The holotable that dominated the centre of the room had been smashed by a falling girder. Bulkheads had collapsed. In one access hatch, a small fire still spluttered. The temperature had dropped precipitously as well, indicating that the _Hawk_'s structural integrity had been compromised. Air and heat was being leached into the vacuum of space.

T3 took a few moments to search his databanks for clues about what happened. The ship had come under attack, that much was obvious. Unfortunately, those sections of his memory seemed to be corrupted. He squawked in frustration. Wheeling around the old woman's corpse, he made for the cockpit. A blip on his scanners, however, brought him up short.

There was a humanoid aboard, but the vital signs that indicated continued life were weak and fading fast. Something recessed deep in his programming told him that he had to help. Coming about, T3 pushed his actuators to their limits, ignoring the debris on the hold's decking. He reached the ring-shaped access way leading to the aft corridor. The other end of had been sealed off by a blast door, but the gunwell and the _Hawk_'s small medbay were still accessible.

T3 entered the medbay and found a tall, slender human woman lying on the sole biobed. She was naked and clearly injured, covered only by the bed's thin, silvery sheet. IV drips were connected to her, a breath mask looped over her face. T3 trundled forward. The medbay's treatment computer was offline, perhaps damaged during the attack like he had been. Inserting a probe into a socket near the computer's base, he quickly jury-rigged a workaround. The computer came alive and resumed its treatment of the woman.

A moment later, his scanners confirmed that her vital signs were stabilising. Relieved, T3 backed away. He didn't recognise this woman, either. Still, her presence added urgency to his current mission: the treatment computer could only do so much with the limited equipment and resources it had at its disposal and she was badly hurt. He needed to somehow get the _Ebon Hawk_ to safety as quickly as possible.

He resolved to head once more for the cockpit, scooting from the aft corridor through the main hold, carefully avoiding the old woman's corpse, and came around the damaged holotable to the forward corridor. This, he remembered as he quickly perused the _Hawk_'s schematics, snaked around the communications chamber and led directly to the ship's bridge.

As he entered the ring hatchway, he heard a banging from a sealed compartment to his right. Spinning his photoreceptors around to examine the compartment, he found a magnetically sealed cargo chamber. The banging fell quiet. Hooting cautiously, he thought about going to have a look. Perhaps there was someone, or something, trapped inside...

The banging resumed, louder, more ferocious.

Emitting a frightened squawk, T3 scooted forward, right into the cockpit. He considered sealing the blast door behind him but decided against it. He might need to get back out there. The cockpit wasn't as badly damaged as the main hold and there were no signs of other bodies. What, he wondered, had happened to the crew?

From the depths of his damaged memory banks, he remembered the _Ebon Hawk_ being a lively, bustling ship. Seven... no, _eight_ sentient organic crew members, plus a smaller organic passenger, another droid besides him and dozens of hopping, organic non-sentients. What had happened to those people?

T3 put that aside for the moment. He could repair his memory centres later. Right now, he needed to focus on his wounded ship. Most of the bridge's consoles were offline, but the one connected to the navicomputer was still operation. He came to a stop right beneath it and once again input a probe.

The computer was sluggish to respond, clearly recovering from a nasty shock. Through it, however, he was able to link in to the ship's ravaged mainframe. He downloaded a damage report and hooted darkly as he went over the data. The hull was breached in at least three places, though only one of those breaches had ruptured the ship's interior: the starboard aft cargo bay and crew quarters had been exposed to the vacuum of space. A blind hyperspace jump had overloaded the motivator and fried the navicomputer, stranding them in interplanetary space. Worse, the communications array was gone so he had no chance of signalling for help.

He weighed his options. As a utility droid, T3 was programmed to interface with computers and mechanical systems and figure out how best to fix any problems that might arise with them. His resources were limited and he was running out of time. He started with the navicomputer, rebooting the system and dumping any corrupted files. He uploaded files from the untouched, restricted back ups. The navicomputer came alive.

T3 tootled his satisfaction. He checked the records for the nearest planetary systems. The closest was somewhere called Peragus. There was only one settlement in the system, a small mining colony, but T3 realised that they would have adequate medical facilities for the _Hawk_'s wounded passenger. Besides, the little droid doubted the ship's damaged hyperdrive could get it any further.

Satisfied that the navicomputer was functioning, T3 headed aft. This time, he gave the sealed compartment and the old woman's body both a wide berth. He zipped past the medbay, taking a moment to check on the patient, before installing himself beside the sealed blast door. It had shut automatically when the hull was breached, though T3 was happy to note that atmospheric integrity had been maintained in the engineering section. He plugged into a control console, opened the door and headed into the cramped engine room.

The gigantic turbines that dominated the room, one to the left and one to the right, were the ship's sublight engines. One of them had been terribly damaged, though the other appeared to be in working order. The hyperdrive motivator, which sat between the turbines, was cracked and sparking. T3 gave the electronic equivalent of a sigh. He could jury-rig the system but he'd get one jump out of it at most.

That, he supposed, was all he needed. And it was the only hope the wounded woman had.

He got to work, doing everything he could to rebuild the badly damaged hyperdrive. He felt the minutes tick by and extended a sensor arm towards the medbay. The woman's life signs were fading rapidly. He finally reconnected the last power line and the hyperdrive blinked back online. Satisfied that he'd get one last jump out of the old system, he rolled back, into the ring hallway that encircled the _Ebon Hawk_'s rear sections. He went port, looking to make sure that nobody else was aboard the ship. Sure enough, he found only another utility droid in the port cargo hold. Unlike his blue-grey plating, this one was clad in brown-and-cream. He didn't recognise it but his computers identified it as 3C-FD.

It was offline and he didn't think he had time to reactivate it.

Returning to the cockpit, T3 activated the navicomputer. Manipulating the computer, he activated the hyperdrive. The _Ebon Hawk _shook around him as it plunged into hyperspace. The banging from the sealed compartment in the main hold was getting so loud that the droid could make it out over the roar of the ship's overtaxed engines.

He thought about the sealing the cockpit once again but decided against it: the woman was stuck out there, after all. Before he could head aft to find out what was going on, the ship shuddered again as it came out of hyerspace.

T3 turned his attention to the cockpit's viewports. Droids didn't possess the same sense of beauty and wonderment as sentients, but T3 was still impressed by the vista that dominated local space. Peragus II, the location of the system's sole settlement, had been shattered by some long-ago cataclysm, exposing the planet's inner core to space. An asteroid field glittered around it.

He let out a long, low whistle.

The _Hawk_'s control console came online. T3 beeped his annoyance, plugging in only to find that he was locked out of the system. The ship was being taken into the asteroid field, headed for the Peragus colony.

Realising that there was nothing he could do, T3 went aft... just as the magnetically sealed door exploded open. The droid squawked in fear, spinning around to face the now-open compartment. Flames roared, smoke obscuring much of the main hold. A tall, spindly humanoid droid stepped out of the compartment, clutching a blaster rifle. Behind it was a second droid, though this one was clearly damaged and deactivated. They appeared identical, but while the mobile droid was clad in steel-grey armour, its twin was rust-coloured.

T3 hooted a warning greeting. The droid swivelled its head towards him, red photoreceptors glinting. It lifted its blaster rifle.

And T3's world went dark again.


	3. I - Amongst the Dead

**ONE  
****Amongst the Dead**

* * *

_The bridge of a starship. The alert lights are on full, plunging the crowded, bustling space into a crimson twilight. Through the viewports, a vicious battle rages. For an outside observer, it might even be beautiful. Great capital ships connected by lines of red and blue and green laser fire; tiny starfighters ride needles of ion efflux; here and there, extraordinary explosions that die an instant later in the frozen vacuum._

_ She watches it all without passion, without pain, without fear. She is cold and ruthless in her movements, in her orders. She directs her gunners to target this battlecruiser, that frigate. She commands the ships of her fleet into this manoeuvre, that assault. At her order, thousands of sentients perish in an instant as a reactor core overloads. At her order, the lone pilot of a single starfighter is vaporised as a proton missile hits home. She has power over life and death. It is intoxicating. She is the master of this war._

_ She will prove her mastery of it. She will end it._

_ Far below the battle is a planet, a seemingly peaceful world orbiting a seemingly benign star. The name of this world is spoken as a curse: Malachor V. Soon, it will be remembered as the graveyard of the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders._

_ "It's ready, general," the technician says, his voice husky._

_ She takes a deep breath. She reaches out, feels the lives at her fingertips. Hundreds of Mandalorian ships are trapped in Malachor V's gravity well, dozens of Republic vessels amongst them. Tens of thousands of lives._

_ But billions more are out their, amongst the stars, their safety, their security, their very existence dependent upon her._

_ She speaks the final word, gives the order that will end the word: "Fire."_

_ The technician turns the key._

_ In an instant, tens of thousands are killed. In an instant, Malachor V is destroyed. The waves of pain and fear and terror wash over her, shatter her. In an instant, the war ends. And so does she._

* * *

_Wake._

She felt more than heard the word whispered to her. It seeped into her sleep-clouded brain, wormed its way to the front of her mind. Her eyes snapped open. She was suspended in cool blue liquid, her limbs unresponsive and her perceptions sluggish. She remained conscious only for a few moments.

When she came to a few moments later, the liquid had drained and she was slumped against the side of the transparisteel tube she was trapped in. Her mind was still heavy and she could barely lift her arms but she managed to press a hand to the glass. It was then that she realised a breath mask was clamped over her mouth and nose. A headache washed over her and she had to shut her eyes again, wincing to overcome the pain.

She slipped into unconsciousness for a few more moments.

Then she felt cold, hard decking beneath her. This snapped her awake. She sat up, instantly hyperaware, as though coming out of a dream. A flood of sensory perceptions threatened to overwhelm her. She was in a cold, metallic chamber, circular in shape, with a large door in front of her. There was a console embedded in the wall beside the door and three transparent tubes stretching from the floor to the ceiling behind her.

One was empty. The other two were still filled with the cold blue liquid she'd been suspended in a few moments before. Kolto, she realised. A healing fluid sourced from the distant ocean world Manaan. A human male floated in one of the tanks, his face obscured behind a breath mask. She realised with a dawning horror that he was dead.

"Where the hell am I?" she muttered to herself.

She considered shouting out, only to decide against it. Something was niggling at the corner of her perceptions, ordering her not to.

Her mind was still foggy, clouded. Though she'd been aware of her surroundings originally, her senses seemed to be dulled. She'd been drugged, she realised. Desperately, she fought to remember something of what had happened before she'd been immersed in the tank.

A name floated up from the recesses of her mind. Meetra. Meetra Surik. She blinked, realising that the name belonged to her. She pushed herself off the deck, her legs wobbling beneath her as she stood. She'd been on a ship... a big ship. A powerful ship. Something had happened. She'd been injured.

She struggled over to the console. Instinctually, she input an activation command. A log in screen blinked to life, asking her to input a name and password. Giving up for a moment, she went to the door. Tapping the control in the centre, it cycled open. She was faintly aware of being nude and resolved to find some clothes as quickly as she could.

Exiting what she now realised was a sickbay, she found herself in a small room. Each of the four walls featured a door. Deciding randomly, she took the left door. Inside was a laboratory. Nothing especially well-appointed, just a workbench, deactivated computer terminals and small storage area. Inside she found a blue jumpsuit with dark orange panels amongst a small pile of plasteel cylinders and durasteel footlockers. It would be a bit loose on her but seemed comfortable enough.

Shrugging, Meetra said to herself "That'll do."

Pulling the jumpsuit on, she rooted around in the cylinders and lockers, only to find chemical compounds and deactivated datapads. Patting herself down, she found a small code cylinder in the breast pocket. Blinking, she raced back to the sickbay. Plugging the cylinder into the side of the console, the screen powered up and instantly displayed a root menu.

Several options blinked at her. The first couple were standard computer operations, shut down, log off, et cetera, but the fourth and fifth were more interesting. The first was a record of administered patient treatments. Selecting this, she read with mounting horror. All three kolto tanks had been active, though only two patients had been immersed.

One of them was registered as "unknown human female". In other words, her. The other was listed as Inij Honto. Looking over her shoulder, she examined the man's floating body. According the record, she'd suffered from several wounds, including blunt force trauma, three cracked ribs and limited organ damage. Inij Honto, however, had gotten something worse: burns to more than fifty per cent of his body and severe lacerations. Amongst the drugs pumped into the tanks, however, was enough sedative to kill a gundark.

Meetra cursed. There was no way that was accidental. Someone had tried to kill her and had succeeded in killing Honto.

Once again, she whispered to herself: "Where the hell am I?"

A long time ago, this would have been so much easier. She'd have been able to reach out and touch the Force, probing it for information or guidance. For years now, she'd had no connection to the Force. It had felt, at first, like losing her hands or one of her senses. She'd felt lesser, defeated somehow. Now she was used to it. The Force was a tool that was lost to her.

Activating the fifth option on the root menu, she came across the medical officer's logs. Meetra read the files quickly, her jaw hanging open. She learned that she was somewhere called Peragus. She didn't know if it was a planet, a moon, an asteroid or what, but she guessed that she wasn't on a ship or a space station, judging by the lack of engine vibrations or subtle rotation that would have accompanied those settings.

The officer had recorded the arrival of a small freighter. Three droids had been found aboard along with two organic passengers. One had been dead dead on arrival. The second, whom Meetra deduced had been her, was badly wounded and had been put straight into kolto. Less than a day later, a massive explosion had sent several miners to the sick bay. Two had died of their wounds but the third had been put in the tanks.

Miners, Meetra thought. A mining facility, then. Drilling or digging for something dangerous, if an explosion had caused such havoc. The last entry seemed rushed, as though the author was concerned or scared. It provided no useful information, no clue as to who might have drugged her. It did, however, mention someone called Coorta.

Sighing, Meetra deactivated the terminal.

She headed back out of the sickbay and glanced at the door to her right. Something in there seemed to call to her. She realised with a shudder that it must be the morgue. She opened the hatch and stepped inside. The room was stark white, with six slabs lining the walls. The air was chill and her breath misted in plumes before her.

Three of the slabs were occupied. Two of the bodies had been human males. They looked badly injured, burnt and gouged by something thick and powerful. No way did a mere explosion cause that much damage. They were wearing the same outfit she was. The dead miners, then.

The third body was an old woman. She wore a rough, homespun brown robe. To Meetra, she looked remarkably frail, her craggy face wearing a mask of tired worry even in death. Turning back to the miners, she began to search for another code cylinder just like the one she'd pilfered from the medlab. She needed some more answers.

Instead, she found a plasma torch clutched in one of the miners' hands. A rudimentary weapon, to be sure, but she was glad to have one.

"Find what you're looking for amongst the dead?"

Meetra nearly jumped out of her skin at the faint, gravelly voice that emerged from the other end of the morgue. She spun around to find the old woman sitting up. The cowl of her robe fell across her eyes but she seemed to be staring right at her. Bizarrely, Meetra felt guilty, like a child caught reaching for the forbidden sweets.

"I thought _you_ were dead," she managed, getting past her shock. She blinked as she realised she'd heard that voice before. "Your voice... I heard it when I was in the kolto tank."

The woman's cracked lips briefly turned upwards. "Yes, I had hoped as much. I slept here too long and could not awaken. It may be I reached out unconsciously and your mind must have been a willing one. Or perhaps you were trained for such things?"

Even though she couldn't see the old woman's eyes, Meetra could have sworn they were drilling into her like mining lasers. She shifted uncomfortably. "Slept too long? You looked dead when I came in."

At this, the woman's smile froze. It seemed somehow more genuine. "A simple deception. Death is not difficult to master, in its own way."

Meetra almost laughed at the cryptic response. It reminded her of a teacher she'd had long ago. "Who are you?"

"I am Kreia," the old woman answered simply. "I am your rescuer, as you are mine. Tell me, do you recall what happened?"

Meetra shrugged, but the cobwebs in her mind her clearing more rapidly now. "I was on a Republic ship, the _Harbinger_. Do you know what happened to it?"

"Your ship was attacked and you were the only survivor," Kreia answered. "A result of your Jedi training, no doubt."

"I..." Meetra froze, brought up short. She thought about denying it but something in the woman's tone told her that any lie would be pointless. "I'm not a Jedi anymore."

Kreia surveilled her for a moment before going on. "Your stance, your walk tells me you are a Jedi. Your walk is heavy, you carry something that weighs you down."

Meetra blinked. That hit her too close to home. "The Jedi Order and I have a... checkered past."

"So it would seem," Kreia answered, as though shrugging her off. "Keep your past and let us focus on the now."

"All right then," Meetra nodded evenly, still a little unnerved. "Where are we?"

"I don't know," Kreia admitted. "I was removed from the events of the world as I slept. A survey of our surroundings may reveal more..."

"I know that we're somewhere called Peragus," Meetra interrupted, indicating the uniform she wore. "Some kind of mining facility would be my guess. I just don't know where Peragus is. Or where any of the crew are."

"The ship we arrived in must still be in this place. We should recover it and leave?"

Meetra frowned. "Why so hasty? I'll admit, this place gives me the creeps..."

"We were attacked once," Kreia answered sharply, "and I fear our attackers will not give up the hunt so easily. Without transport, weapons and information, they will find us easy prey indeed."

"All right," Meetra nodded. "Let's go, then. We're in the medical facility but I don't know where that is in relation to the hangar bay or whatever kind of control and command post they've got around here..."

Kreia waved a gnarled, liver-spotted hand. "No. I will remain here. My time amongst the dead has left me weary. You will explore alone."

Meetra scowled, her suspicions suddenly aroused. "When I was in the kolto tank, someone administered a lethal dose of sedative to the whole system. Any idea why someone would do that?"

Kreia seemed genuinely bewildered. "I do not know. Why did they spare you?"

"They didn't," Meetra answered sharply. "I got the same dose."

The old woman took a moment to consider. "Indeed. A Jedi trance would keep you safe from such poisons... perhaps the sedatives were meant to keep you unconscious for some time, killing those who were untrained in such techniques. Most curious."

"You know more than you're saying," Meetra said, acting on a hunch that had been building at the back of her mine.

"So do you," Kreia responded. "For now, we have other concerns. Chief amongst them: finding our new enemy."

Meetra wanted more information but she knew Kreia was right. They had indeed been attacked once already and someone had tried to murder her here, on Peragus. This was not a safe place. "I'll come back soon and make sure you're all right," Meetra said, though her offer was as much a test as it was out of concern.

"I leave you to the explorations of this place. Here, I will remain and attempt to centre myself," she said as she lowered herself on creaky knees to the metallic deck. Wresting the backs of her palms on her knees, she adopted a meditative pose and mien.

"Maybe when I come back," Meetra said under her breath, turning for the morgue door, "you'll answer my questions."

"I have found that answers come in their own time," she whispered as the door closed behind the other woman. "Not yours, Exile."


End file.
